The Corpus Callosum

The thing about music is, there is so much of it. If Sturgeon's Law applies to music (and I so no reason why it doesn't), and 95% of it is crud, there is still more good music than you will ever be able to process in your lifetime.

The average person's conception of what constitutes the complete range of "music" is only a tiny slice of what's out there. Most folks are unforgivably parochial when they speak of music. People have been making rich, complex, fully realized music for at least 80,000 years. More good music has been lost into the ether than all the world's libraries could ever hold. There were singers and composers walking across the Bering land bridge who could make you cry.

I have dedicated thirty years of my life to an infinitesimally tiny slice of music (early 20th century American popular music, mostly), and not a week goes by that I don't hear or read a song I've never heard before, and say to myself, "Damn, there is so much good music, and I'll never be able to learn it all."

And I'm a trained, discriminating listener, who finds 95% of what I hear unforgivably boring, drab, dull, and awful. Consider: I have absolutely no use for rock music -- no offense to those who do. And yet, I know that there are more subgenres of Death Metal alone than the average headbanger can begin to deal with.

I haven't even begun to expose myself to the Edo-period shamisen repertoire, or Australian clapping-stick music, or Beijing opera, or Carnatic music, or Fado, or Hi-Life, or Soviet film music, or Choctaw round-dance music, or the music of 19th c. Buenos Aires salons, or ....

Posted by: HP | November 28, 2007 12:22 AM

Oh OK, I'll bite just to keep you happy.

1. Who decides if it's good or not? You, perhaps? What culture/prejudice/historical era are they/you in? If a time machine had brought back recordings of Stravinsky for Mozart to hear, would he have unequivically declared it 'good', 'bad' or the work of a madman?

2. This may have been true in the 50s and 60s classical scene but it's definitely not true today.

3. Doesn't this all depend on how "good" the audience perceives the music to be? Alcohol seems to play a significant role too.

Good wind-up though.

Posted by: Jonathan | November 29, 2007 5:47 PM